this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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I agree: it’s extremely difficult to find what I would call the “middle 80%” since the only people who tend to get all the media attention are the extremes at both ends who are hell bent on maintaining their airtime with ever more insane stunts.
I don’t understand how people can vote for someone who did such a piss poor job his first time around, but then again my province elected a drug dealer who ran with literally no election platform whatsoever and won, twice. It boggles the mind. Populism is a cancer.
I've just accepted that I'm completely out of touch with the average American.
I think mass media reporting makes it feel that way but it’s been my experience that it’s not true. I think the average American is doing their best to be a good person with what they’ve got. Their electoral system is broken in a similar way to the Canadian one: boiling down to a binary, two party decision that has no basis in reality, and a media that encourages extreme, polarizing positions.
Even this last election doesn’t (in my mind) reflect the average American. Less than half the eligible population cast their ballots. That’s a separate issue (voter disillusionment) but to me it means that those who did vote aren’t actually representative of what the average American wants or feels.
This all could be me being completely out of touch with the average American, but I don’t think it is based on my daily in-person interactions with them.